


Agonist Autumn or the Fall

by kiragilitter



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cross-Species Interaction, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Renegade Time Lords, Speculation on all things Gallifreyan, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 03:21:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5568946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiragilitter/pseuds/kiragilitter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of another renegade Time Lord, who picks up companions, saves planets, and talks very fast. But unlike the Doctor sometimes the Fall says goodbye, sometimes the Fall stays behind after the explosions stop and the government's been brought to its knees.</p><p>Expect lots of timey-wimey nonsense, Time Lord-human feels, and seat-of-the-pants planning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agonist Autumn or the Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time has a way of going in circles.

**(the past, the future)**

               “Are you alright?”

                She groans and looks up into the eyes of a stranger. “I’m sorry. You took a nasty fall, but I don’t think you’ll have to regenerate.”

                “I should think not!” she says, affronted. “I’m only ninety-six. Who are you, why are running around the Academy like a madman?” He offers her a hand and pulls her to her feet, and begins dusting off her robes before she slaps his hands away, which makes him laugh.

                “I’m the Doctor, and I’m afraid I was a bit overexcited. I haven’t been on the Academy grounds in millennia. I’m very pleased to meet you… sorry, what was your name?”

                She tells him, and he blinks at her. “But that’s… oh. I’ve never seen you in this body before.” He walks around her, looking her up and down. “Agonist Autumn, I’ve missed you.” And to her horror, he embraces her, picks her up and spins.

                When he puts her down she has to put her hands on her hips to stop herself from hitting him. “Excuse me, but I don’t think we’ve met!” she says, affronted.

                “No. Well, it’d be more accurate to say that I’ve met you, but you haven’t met me. I’m a friend.”

                “Are my friends in the future all madmen?” she asks, arms crossed and scowling at him. It has far from the desired effect as he laughs and drops an arm on her shoulder.

                “I wouldn’t know. Just me, probably.” He shrugs. “But it’s so very good to see you. Even if you’ve never seen me before. You’re _brilliant,_ old friend. I’ve missed you.”

                She sighs. “This means time travel… which means… hang on, did you say you’re the _Doctor_?”

                “The definitive article, you might say.” He’s grinning proudly, and it’s unnerving.

                “You’re that renegade, aren’t you?” she says, pointing.

                “Well…”

                “That idiot who barely passed his examinations, kidnapped his granddaughter and stole a junked Tardis!”

                “Hey! My Tardis is not junk!” He pauses and she raises an eyebrow that he only took offense to the last one. “Wait a minute, you’ve heard of me?”

                She rolls her eyes. “ _Obviously_.”

                “But that… that’s impossible. _You_ inspired me to leave. You wrote about the role of Renegades in Gallifreyan history and the hypocrisy of the non-inter—” he claps a hand over his mouth, halting the flow of words. “Agonist Autumn?” he asks, hopefully.

                “ _Who_ is Agonist Autumn?”

                “Or the Fall, perhaps? That’s the name used more often.”

                “The _what_?”

                They stare at each other in disbelief.

                “I think I might have come too early.”

                “I don’t think you should have come at all!”

                “Or we’re in a predestination paradox. Which, frankly, was brilliant of you…” he trails off, clearly lost in thought before smiling again. “You have lots of adventure ahead of you,” he tells her. “I know it. Brave heart, old friend… lots of bravery. You, an academic, at the right place at the right time, who learns about something terrible going on, right now. You’ll have to fight to stop it, you’ll protest and travel the stars to build your case, to prove your point. You’re going to save so many worlds, Agonist Autumn, with the things you say. There are stars because of you,” he grips her arms. “And I’m sorry, so sorry, because it will be hard. So very hard… But I know you’ll be brilliant. I was there!”

                And before she can protest, he leans in and kisses her forehead.

                It’s a brief contact, a rather emotional, _human_ gesture, from what she knows about humanity (what she’s learned in books about other races), and in that touch, she sees the universe. It’s terrible and beautiful, and the Doctor burns at the heart of time, and the future is full of light and darkness and fire and ice, war and kindness, and she’s there too, amongst the stars.

                He pulls away and looks into her eyes. “Thank you, for everything.”

                And he walks away, leaving her to face the future, the universe beckoning to her.

* * *

                Later, centuries later, she hears about his forced regeneration and his exile on Earth. It burns her. Renegade or not, it is so very, very wrong when he was attempting to _save them_.

                It makes her dig deeper, and she sees something they didn’t want her, or anyone to see. It’s terrible.

                And by Rassilon, she isn’t going to let this go quietly.

* * *

                 Two hundred years of writing, of studying other worlds, of mucking about quietly in time and space.

                They’ve done something to Time itself, letting their backroom conflicts spill into other times and cultures, too many cover-ups about Rassilon and Omega and how it all began, the Untempered Schism, the Eternals, everything—where regeneration comes from, how they were born. Too many lies, too many secrets. All her evidence gets destroyed, her complaints dismissed, her investigations thwarted, and always threatened subtly to keep her silence.

                So she publishes. She writes under the pseudonym of Agonist Autumn what she has concluded from history, what she has learned about those in power and the political system itself. She presents cases against their constitution, how it fails to do justice, and writes about the Doctor and other Renegades. Those she accuses know, or at least suspect it to be her, but there is a growing movement amongst students to be less xenophobic, less isolationist, because other worlds are becoming temporal powers and they cannot stand _both_ in silence and in judgment. They cannot both be sworn to uphold the Laws of Time (which they wrote) and not interfere when other races changed history.

                She, her words become a symbol of the dissident movement that pressures their government to change. In an act of protest, she scatters her words (or do they _become_ scattered?) into the past, into the future because like it or not, Time can be rewritten. There are worlds to see and mysteries to be solved. It becomes an Incident, something the dusty old senators fear and wish they could undo—but she’s had a century in the field to keep her words in place. It’s a cheap trick, but she outsmarts them, and her words as Agonist Autumn ripple into the past and future of Gallifrey, get flung across the universe to other temporal powers, echoes of her protests and ethics. (She becomes Marx and Paine and Locke, and the Pacifists of Synnead Seven, and Sollax the Wise of Eddored 12.Alpha and countless other thinkers she has admired and loved and studied.) The students, itching to play with time, to be heroes or gods or philosophers, they gather around Agonist Autumn, the writer who promotes change over tradition. She tries to be what Gallifrey has been missing, because they are lost, because nothing _changes_ and beneath a veneer of respectability and veneration, they have been blinded.

                But of course, they crush them, the students, take away the privilege of regeneration of anyone found guilty of sedition.

                So she attends a meeting to formally protest the High Council’s actions and announces to the world what so many have suspected, because they need to listen. “I’m Agonist Autumn.”

                And she kills herself before the college of cardinals, a protest against the sanctity of Time Lord regeneration, against rulings of sedition. It’s a shock, a protest and an affirmation all at once, that the quiet academic being groomed to be the next Head Historian is the one they had been trying to silence all along.

                It’s a gamble, but she knows that they can’t put her on trial without keeping her alive. Those who hate her and those who protect her reach a compromise: conditional exile. That way she is branded a renegade, a criminal, sworn never to publish on Gallifrey again so that she cannot influence any more young minds, change the status quo—so she can no longer investigate their corruption.

                It hurts, but she accepts it, because she’ll find a way back, she’ll change them. And in the mean time, well, she's always wanted to travel the stars. Her old teacher from the Academy slips her a Tardis key, and she takes one of the Historians Guild Tardises meant for field studies, not _quite_ a museum piece.

                She throws a lever and sends back a message to Gallifrey, to let her old teacher know she’ll be different, to tell them that this isn’t the end of it. “Hello, Gallifrey, this is your most recent exile—the one who wrote as Agonist Autumn. Now, I’m a proper Renegade which means I’ll choose my own name, thanks. Call me the Fall.”

                The name is a promise, to always be the dissident, the one to bring down governments and tyrants, to expose corruption. She is the Fall, and it’s a promise of change.

* * *

**(the future, the past)**

                The Fall is on her very last life, which is fine by her. She has gotten so very, very old now. She is on Earth, her poor Tardis laid to rest for the last time, and living an almost normal life (by human standards). It’s the 1960s and she has a home in England, with a garden and several cats. She’s the village eccentric, a mad old woman who can repair nearly anything. In the backyard is an ancient tree, at the heart of its roots is an unmarked gray cylinder, nearly eight feet high.

                One fine day, she spots an old man, who isn't really old at all, meandering down the lane.

                She smiles at him from where she is replanting a rose bush, and he stops at the garden gate, looking at her almost confused, almost suspicious.

                “Hello, Doctor,” she says. A moment stands where he stares at her, feeling time coalesce between them.

                “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ve met you yet,” he says finally, pulling out a monocle.

                “Oh. I suppose you haven’t,” she says, completely unconcerned. “But… I am a friend. And it’s been so long since I’ve seen you last. How is Susan?”

                His face darkens and the Fall sighs. “Oh, I see.”

                “Tell me, who are you?” he demands, crotchety old man persona in place, but this face is so very young, while she is so very old. “I know you’re a Time Lord. Have you come to arrest me then? Hmm? Speak up, speak up!”

                “That’s a long story, Doctor,” she tells him, “But I chose the name ‘the Fall.’”

                “Well, what are you doing on Earth, hm?” She can tell that he doesn’t recognize the name, after all, he was one of the first renegades to leave Gallifrey in living memory. So many of them took off after him.

                “I live here,” she tells him, gesturing to her cottage (which has a few rooms that are larger on the inside). “Would you like some tea? I’ve made some honey cakes.”

                “You _live_ here?”

                “It’s no more eccentric than wandering the universe in a type 40 Tardis with humans by my side.” But she says it gently, with no malice at all. It’s been far too long since she’s seen him, and she suspects that this time will be the last.

                He scowls at her, but lets her tug him through the gate into the garden, and then into the kitchen through the house. She pours the tea and smiles at him. “It’s so very good to see you again, old friend.”

                “Never seen you before in my life,” he mutters into his teacup and she laughs.

                “I know. But we’re friends in the future,” she says. “What brings you to my humble village?”

                “The Tardis. Can’t seem to get the controls to cooperate. I was aiming for Metebilius III.”

                “She’s a clever old thing,” says the Fall. “Unreliable navigation, type 40s, temperamental, but it’s said that they’ll always take you to where you need to be, if not where you want to go. If you didn’t mean to come here, you were probably _meant_ to be here.”

                “You talk in riddles,” he says, but makes no move to leave. The Doctor is curious if nothing else.

                “I know. You did that to me sometimes.”

                “If your past is my future, shouldn’t you have more care with what you tell me?” he asks, as if reprimanding a student asking for an extension on an assignment already long overdue.  

                “I don’t think so,” she says. “You see, a very long time ago, we had almost the exact same conversation that we are having now, except you were the one talking in riddles. I called you a madman.”

                He glowers at her.

                The puts down her tea cup and summons her courage. “Can I tell you a story, Doctor?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The result of my love for Doctor Who: my very own Time Lord. Lady. Whatever. A shameless OC in a rather humble fic.
> 
> In future chapters, there will be companions, regenerations, adventures and feels.
> 
> I will do my best to write around canon, but if I tread on its toes, please let me know. Tags to be added as the story expands, and the title is a work in progress.
> 
> Please beware American spelling, time-travel tense trouble, and non-linear storytelling. The last meaning that I'll post bits that can hopefully stand on their own, but may be pulled and stuck on the end or earlier in the story when I've finished other bits. Sorry ahead of time for any inconvenience.
> 
> (For those who follow nuWho, but are not familiar with classic Doctor Who, the forced regeneration and exile to Earth is what happened to the Second Doctor, before they sent him, freshly regenerated, down to Earth in a broken Tardis with his knowledge of how to operate his Tardis removed. Whereupon he had an adventure with Autons and got signed up to UNIT.)


End file.
